Tesla bought 38,965 Cybertrucks final 12 months.
That makes it the best-selling electrical pickup truck in America.
However demand appears to be slowing down.
Tesla bought 38,965 Cybertruck pickup vans in 2024, in keeping with estimates from Cox Automotive. In its first full 12 months on sale, the Cybertruck dunked on the electrical model of the famed Ford F-150. It ran circles across the Chevrolet Silverado EV. It trounced the Rivian R1T, too. It was the best-selling electrical pickup within the U.S., and the fifth best-selling battery-powered mannequin total.
However does the Cybertruck have the endurance to be an actual moneymaker for Tesla? Or is that this extra of a flash-in-the-pan occasion, fueled by hype that’s sure to fizzle out. Zoom in on the Cybertruck’s quarterly gross sales numbers from final 12 months, and it seems to be like demand for the shiny, angular truck could also be already beginning to falter.
That’s not nice information, given Tesla’s disappointing 2024. The electrical automaker simply notched its first year-over-year decline in deliveries in over a decade, regardless of launching a brand-spanking-new mannequin right into a automobile section that People, by and enormous, can’t get sufficient of. (The Ford F-Sequence truck has been America’s hottest automobile of any variety for occurring 5 many years.)
Within the fourth quarter of 2024, Tesla bought 12,991 Cybertrucks, Cox says. That’s a steep, 22% decline from Q3’s 16,692. Earlier than that the truck was seeing regular development, with 8,755 gross sales in Q2 and a couple of,800 in Q1, its first full quarter on sale.
This will likely sign that after an preliminary surge of pent-up demand from Cybertruck preorder holders—the automobile was first revealed method again in 2019, in any case—curiosity is fading. Certainly, Enterprise Insider reported final week that Tesla employees on the Cybertruck manufacturing line in Texas have been being reassigned to the Mannequin Y line, which doesn’t precisely scream “overwhelming shopper demand.”
We’ve additionally seen Tesla pile on perks like free lifetime Supercharging to clear launch-edition Cybertrucks (the so-called Basis Sequence) from its stock. The vans have additionally been piling up on used-car heaps.
Photograph by: InsideEVs
However the quarter-over-quarter drop in gross sales is the clearest signal but that Cybertruck demand is slowing down. To make certain, it’s attainable that is the results of production-side points, too, like a reported kink within the Cybertruck’s battery provide chain. Tesla did not reply to questions in regards to the slide in Cybertruck gross sales. Tesla virtually by no means responds to media inquiries.
Auto trade analysts have lengthy warned that the Cybertruck could be too bizarre and too costly to noticeably speed up Tesla’s gross sales, and that appears to be what’s occurring right here.
“I feel shoppers like new stuff, and new stuff that is reasonably priced,” mentioned Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of trade insights at Cox. The Cybertruck is unquestionably new, however not very reasonably priced, she famous.
“It is going to, I feel, proceed to be difficult to essentially improve gross sales for the Cybertruck considerably,” she mentioned, given its steep worth and area of interest viewers.
Amid a wider slowdown in EV gross sales development, it’s turn into clear that what folks actually need—and what’s going to transfer the needle for automotive corporations—are long-range EVs with mass-appeal that gained’t break the financial institution. Just like the Chevrolet Equinox EV, our Breakthrough EV of the 12 months.
Tesla went the exact opposite path and appears to be paying the value. Preliminary pricing for the Cybertruck began above $100,000, and now the lowest-cost mannequin begins at $79,990.
Tesla says it has a less expensive mannequin within the works for 2025. For its sake, that had higher come to the rescue quickly.
Contact the writer: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com
